Courses

Our current world and all our relationships in it often leave us breathless and frustrated. Mindfulness—paying attention to the present moment with curiosity and kindness—helps us slow down, take a breath, and befriend the inner resources that lead to discovery, delight, and a life well lived. Integrating insights and exercises from mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) with those from improvisational theater, this immersive, experiential course will help you forge new neural pathways and develop a more connected personal presence. While mindfulness training sometimes takes on a somber or even pious tone (This is serious stuff!), in this course, we choose a different track, learning to “play attention” through traditional methods and through humor, games, and exercises drawn from the wisdom of applied improvisation. Our topics will include relationship to failure, paying attention, cultivating curiosity and kindness, the mind as storyteller, moving from reactivity to response, and mindfulness in motion. Learning modes will include formal mindfulness practices, informal activities that integrate the skills we are learning into daily life, and shared inquiry using safe small- and large-group discussions to draw wisdom from the whole group.